Poetry, I would die for you.
If you were recruiting armies
I should not need conscription,
But gladly I would go to your banners,
And pin my heart on the bayonet of a foe,
Or suffocate, drowning in floods of gas
Horribly,
Or tangle my guts in barbed wire.
Any death, Poetry, for you-
Willingly.
But your demands are so difficult.
Helen Hoyt’s poem “Patriotism” (via iamonlyamaid)
ugh my GOD. yes. yes. i would, too. i would i would i would.
Source: iamonlyamaid
Kermit Bird reads some Whitman.
oh my gosh. this. just…all of this.
Source: mythologyofblue
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space…
You must grieve for this right now
—you have to feel this sorrow now—
for the world must be loved this much
if you’re going to say “I lived”…
Source: sharingpoetry
i love when newspaper blackout poems turn out perfectly.
(via fuckyeahbookarts)
Source: tylerknott
I never went to that movie at 12:45
by Dolly Lemke
I wasn’t honest with most of my boyfriends.
I just wanted to have as much sex as possible.
I never told my mom the real reason I got my tongue pierced.
The cigarettes that weren’t mine were actually mine, every time.
I’m not really okay with being alone in any sense.
I have been afraid of the dark since I was 6 years old.
I wish girls liked me more.
There is an exact ratio of coffee, cream, and sugar in every cup I drink.
Half the books I own I have never read.
I am nervous for my blood work to come back.
The countless times I have called my gynecologist in panic.
The countless times I have had to ask for help because I don’t have insurance.
He asked me when I was getting married.
The scale must be wrong.
I got so excited about a sealing wax set and an orange serving spoon at an estate
sale.
The feeling I got about buying something from an estate sale.
I love crafts made by elderly women: pressed flower cards, doilies, and knit
pot-holders.
I will go deeply in debt for vintage dresses that sway lightly in my closet.
I spent $192 at the Antique Mart on Broadway today: a 1960’s Mod Print dress,
a 1950’s solid wood bedside table, a sequins party dress.
The number of times I have to inventory our relationship before you forget
where I am.
I purposefully call you when you are sleeping, so “we must have just missed
each other.”
How much I would rather not do this.
How much I love doing this.
Letter From the End of the World
Lisel Mueller
The reason no longer matters,
the lamp, my curiosity,
my sisters’ insinuations,
never waking up together,
you saying, “Trust me.” //
The point is the end of innocence
comes when you look at someone you love
asleep and see how his eyeballs flicker
under their shallow lids. //
The point is since I lost you
I have been going around the world
looking for you and finding myself
instead, small scraps of a woman
that are beginning to fit. //
At first the mountains closed ranks against me,
blackberries dried in my mouth,
the wind kept turning to face me.
Wherever I came, the music stopped,
sidewalks opened up manholes,
lights went out,
a pregnant woman shielded her face. //
But I learned to sleep on the ground
despite the heartbeat of giant oaks
and the moon’s soft taunts at the sun,
the all-night labor of heaving roots,
the mushroom smell of death. //
I learned not to throw the bouquets
the wretched made of their wounds
back in their faces, to accept
tears brought me on red pillows,
to knock on plain white doors
without windows or peepholes, not knowing
whose voice would say, “Come in.” //
The point is I came back
from the deep places. Always
there was help, a man or woman
who asked no questions, an animal’s
warm body, the itch in my muscles
to climb a swiming rope. //
I started out as a girl
without a shadow, in iron shoes;
now, at the end of the world
I am a woman full of rain.
The journey back should be easy;
if this reaches you, wait for me.
I can only hope this is the next book I’m required to read for a poetry workshop.
Source: weheartit.com
Wren Anting
How small I am in the fly’s eye
but many, many. How cool I am to the fire
but tasty, tasty. You lie in the dust
with your wings open and the ants clean you.
You stand under the waterfall and scream
all you wish to obliterate. This is my absolution,
my attendance policy. One book copied
by sloshed monks full of dragons.
A flask of tiger drool. Don’t let
the avalanche come to rest
even if it requires life-support,
it will be too sad to bother with music.
Keats lived on Dean Street when in med school.
He held them down, he held them down
and mopped up afterward. The best death
is to be crushed by the color blue.
The best portrait is done with a feather.
To be hunted down by magnesium
and recruited for its strict flash is inevitable.
Charity is rain. At my shoulder and knee
I am ripping my membrane for elevation.
The stars keep leaning on me. I feed
the turtles cut-up pear to aid
my return from Hell.
[vul.gar.i.ty] noun:
